OK, that’s what I thought it said. That’s some of the worst copywriting I’ve ever heard. This was the lead-in line to a TV advertisement for Off Broadway Shoes. I’ll concede that perhaps the copywriters were trying to get attention by having this very confusing line. But, I think it’s simply not a good line. How do I imagine more shoes than I could ever imagine? I tried. I couldn’t do it. No matter how many shoes I imagined, I could never imagine more than I could ever imagine.

Think about it. The copy and the paradox got you thinking about expanding your world view of how many shoes could be in one place. “More shoes than you can imagine” isn’t enough. And “imagine more shoes” isn’t enough. Imagining more shoes than you can imagine tells me that a huge infinite collection of shoes might somewhere in the universe exist, but not at broadway shoes. Broadway shoes just has more shoes than you can imagine, not more than you imagine you could imagine. I imagine most people would have a problem with conducting a thought experiment within a thought experiment.

a. Van Winkle said,

I run the advertising agency that made the ad. I can assure you that our copywriters did not write that ad. It was a line that the client saw on a billboard and forced us to put it in the ad. I agree that it makes no sense at all.